Multiscale modeling: Prediction for thermophysical properties of needled carbon/carbon composite and evaluation of brake disk system

A multiscale modeling is proposed in this paper to study needled carbon/carbon composite. According to the microscopic observation of three-dimensional (3D) needled carbon/carbon (C/C) composites, we build a representative volume element (RVE) model to predict the coefficients of thermal expansion (CTEs) and thermal conductivities. The effects of needled parameters on thermophysical properties are also analyzed, which is aimed to facilitate the preparation design of the needled C/C composites. Based on the heat transfer theory and the finite difference method, we establish a transient thermal numerical model, which could efficiently evaluate influences of different multi-disk structures, thermal conductivities and diffusivities on temperature field distributions. Furthermore, considering the coupling effect of the temperature field and contact pressure distributions, thermoelastic instability phenomenon is investigated in the present study. And our RVE model is utilized to improve the thermoelastic instability phenomenon. The proposed multiscale modeling method could lay the foundation for the conceptual design of brake disk system.